The following article has been edited and appears here by permission
of the author. It is drawn from an appendix in a much larger work (approximately
1,200 pages) by the author, entitled Ancient Texts and Mormonism,
which he hopes to publish in the future. Inquires can be forwarded to the author by
clicking here.

The relationship of Freemasonry to the LDS Temple Endowment has long
been a matter of speculation among students of Mormon history. Joseph Smith was of
the opinion that Masonic ritual was a corrupt form of the original Priesthood. Thus,
in a letter to Parley P. Pratt, written three months after Joseph became a Master Mason,1 Heber C. Kimball observed that:

There is a similarity of Priesthood in Masonry. Brother Joseph
says Masonry was taken from the Priesthood, but has degenerated. But many things are
perfect.2

Later, he explained that:

The Masonry of today is received from the apostasy which took place
in the days of Solomon and David. They have now and then a thing that is correct, but
we have the real thing.3

Benjamin F. Johnson, another of Joseph's intimate friends, recalled
the similar opinion of the Prophet that:

Freemasonry was the apostate endowment, as sectarian religion was
the apostate religion.4

But since Masonic historians make no claim that
masonry existed prior to the time of the medieval cathedral-builders, anti-Mormons
have been quick to argue that the similarities between Mormonism and Masonry can only be
of recent origin, indeed, can be no more than the product of deliberate borrowing
from the Masons by a naive or devious Joseph Smith.
Very seldom, however, do they think to ask where the Masons obtained their
ideas, or to compare them with what is known of the Primitive Church and its Temple
traditions. Indeed, most recent scholars are content to point out superficial
resemblances between the Mormon Endowment and the rites of Free-masonry, while entirely
ignoring the fact that the Endowment far more closely resembles the ancient rites
of the Church than it does Freemasonry, or than Freemasonry resembles the ancient rites of
the Church.5Were
they to discover what truly lies behind Freemasonry, then, they would quickly realize that
it has preserved authentic relics of early Christianity, which by largely unknown means
had filtered down to it from the mysteries of the past, and which even in their Masonic
dress furnish important clues to the nature of their original sources. Obviously,
Joseph Smith was inspired to recognize this generic relationship; thus it would appear to
have been Providence rather than Deception which led the Prophet to become a Mason in
1842, perhaps as part of his ongoing education in the rudiments of the Restored Gospel.

It is remarkable that the Prophet not
only claimed to recognize in Freemasonry authentic survivals of ancient Temple practice,
but alsodared to correct what he found, offering in
its place what he said was the true and uncorrupted prototype. Thus, while Mormon
Temple ritual bears a familial resemblance to Masonic ritual, it also differs in
significant points, showing that Joseph had his own ideas about the proper form of the
original. Indeed, there are already scattered passages in the Book of Mormon
(1830) which suggest the existence of a fuller and more
mature Priesthood order, specifically referred to as the "Holy Order of the Son of
God" (Alma 13). In these scattered passages we repeatedly encounter figures of
speech which betray surprising knowledge on the part of their authors of what was yet to
be revealed to Joseph Smith:

Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands (1 Nephi
21:16).

I have beheld his glory and am encircled about eternally in the arms
of his love (2 Nephi 1:15).

I pray the God of my salvation that he will view me with his
all-searching eye...(and) witness that I shook your iniquities from my soul, and that I
stand before him, and am rid of your blood (9:44).

We are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his
will...in all things that he shall command...that we not bring upon ourselves a
never-ending torment (Mos. 5:5).

It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God; nevertheless
they are under a strict command that they shall not impart only according to that portion
of his word which he doth grant unto the children of men (12:9).

He put forth his hand, and raised the king from the earth, and said
unto him, Stand. And he stood upon his feet, receiving his strength (22:22).

I give unto you power that whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall
be sealed in heaven (Hel. 10:7).

Blessed are the all pure in heart, for they shall see God (3 Nephi
12:8).

For thy Maker, thy Husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name (22:5).

Beholding within the veil he saw the finger of Jesus (Ether, 3:19).

There were many whose faith was so exceedingly strong...who could
not be kept from within the veil (12:19).

I have seen Jesus, and...he hath talked with me face to face
(12:39).

We cannot comment openly on these passages, nor shall we enter below
into a discussion of the Endowment itself; but the Latter-day Saint who attends the Temple
and understands its doctrines will readily recognize their relevance to modern Temple
practice. They are especially important for us because they show that the Endowment
was not created de novo during the last years of Joseph Smith's life, nor did it
owe its initial inspiration to Smith's encounter with Masonry, but fitted perfectly into the plan for restoring the Gospel from the start.7

The nature of Temple worship in antiquity will in fact show more
clearly than anything else that the origins of the LDS Temple Endowment lie farther back
than the advent of modern Freemasonry. We must therefore investigate the ancient
sources of Masonic ritual, to show that it does indeed contain important relics of the
original Temple-cultus, hence was readily capable of stimulating the mind of Joseph Smith
in his own work of recognition and restoration. The heart of Masonry is the granting
of the Third Degree (Master Mason), which depicts the death and resurrection of
"Hiram Abiff" (2 Chron. 4:16: Huram Abiv, "Hiram, his father").
This is brought about by means of a life-giving embrace between the candidate and a
Master Mason, known as the "Five Points of Fellowship." Since Cecil
McGavin's popular Mormonism and Masonry8
describes this embrace in some detail, we shall use it as a convenient starting point for
our own discussion. A Masonic poem quoted by McGavin describes and explains these
"Five Points of Fellowship" together with the Masonic writer's reflections on
their meaning ("Masonic Moralizing"):

Foot to foot (teaches) that we will not hesitate to go on
foot to aid and succor a needy Brother; Knee to knee, that we will ever remember a
Brother's welfare... Breast to breast, that we will ever keep a Brother's
secrets...Hand to back, that we will ever be ready to stretch forth our hand to aid
and support a falling brother; Cheek to cheek, or mouth to ear, that we will
ever whisper good counsel in the ear of a Brother.9

In the Masonic rite, the whispered "good counsel" is the
"Masonic Word," which restores "marrow in the bones." After
receiving it, the candidate is told that he has gained immortality by recapitulating the
death and resurrection of Hiram, "the greatest man who ever lived,"10 and who long ago allowed himself to
be killed rather than divulge the secret knowledge which he had discovered on ancient
pillars when excavating for the foundation of Solomon's Temple.

Masonic legend further tells us that God had
originally revealed this knowledge to Adam and the patriarchs, and that Enoch had inscribed it against the
threat of the coming Flood. When Hiram's co-workers were deprived of direction by
his untimely death, they attempted to resuscitate him "upon the Five Points of
Fellowship," which enabled them to learn enough to complete the Temple and to
continue in their occupation as "stone-masons" (cf. Eph. 2:20-22; 2 Pet. 2:5),
i.e. as co-builders of Christ's "Heavenly Temple." Yet the oldest form of
this modern legend appears to have dealt not with Hiram Abiff, but with Noah, the last of
the patriarchs to have heard and retained God's original revelation.11 Thus we read in the
seventeenth century Graham Manuscript, a Masonic document rediscovered in 1936, how
Shem, Ham and Japeth sought to recover their dead father's precious knowledge after the
Flood. This Scottish work describes how they attempted to revive his corpse; but
when they took a grip at a finger...it came away; so from joint to joint; so to the wrist;
and so to the elbow.12
So they reared up the dead body and supported it, setting foot to foot, knee to
knee, breast to breast, cheek to cheek, and hand to back, and cried out, "Help, Oh
Father," as if they had said, "Oh Father in Heaven, help us now, for our earthly
father cannot." So they laid the dead body down again, not knowing what else to
do. Then one of them said, "There is yet marrow in this bone;" and the
second said, "But a dry bone." And the third said, "It
stinketh." So they agreed to give it a name, as it is known to Freemasonry to
this day.13

Masonic researcher, J. R. Reynolds, believes that a Noachic Miracle
Play produced at Wakefield and Newcastle in the late Middle Ages contained these
"necromantic" events in a "comic" or "ludicrous" fashion.14 Sir Edmund Chambers' The
Medieval Stage refers to a similar spectacle, which, however, "seems to have been
a pageant or dumb-show rather than a proper miracle play."15 Alex Horne, perhaps the
finest of all Masonic scholars, tentatively concludes that this Noachic
"pantomime" was adopted and retained by the Masons, and
eventually assimilated into the story of Hiram Abiff, with
the result that he too was said to have died and been resurrected before passing his vital
knowledge to his successors.16

Yet both the "Points of Fellowship" and the idea of
regaining ancient knowledge concerning eternal life had a much earlier origin than even
the late Middle Ages. The embrace itself goes back at
least to the Old Testament legends of Elijah and Elisha, who raised widows' sons by
"stretching themselves" upon their dead bodies and placing mouth upon mouth,
eyes upon eyes, and hands upon hands.17

The same embrace reappeared in the early Christian Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus tells the disciples that they
must "become one" with him by placing eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in
the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in the place of an
image (Log. 22).

That this was remembered even during the Middle Ages is shown by the
fact that the Seder Eliyahu Rabbah (eighth century) also explains how God will
resuscitate the dead by lifting them out of the dust, setting them on their feet, and
placing them between his knees to embrace them and press them to him.18

The concomitant expression, "fellowship," which has
remained so closely associated with this embrace in Masonic lore, likewise had an ancient
origin, being identical to the Greek word, koinonia, used to describe the union of
Christ and his disciples, who must suffer what the Savior suffered in order to obtain
eternal life:

As ye are sharers (koinonoi) of the sufferings (of Christ),
so shall you also be of the consolation (2 Cor. 1:5-7).

That I might know him and the power of his resurrection, and the
fellowship of his sufferings (koinonian tes pathematon autou), being conformed to
his death, that if possible I may obtain the resurrection from the dead (Phil. 3:10-11).

He has given us precious and very great promises that you might
become sharers (koinonoi) of the Divine Nature, having escaped the corruption that
is in the world (2 Pet. 1:4).

Additional embraces depicting this saving "fellowship"
have been preserved in the early Jewish-Christian Odes of Solomon:

Thou hast given us thy fellowship (Ode 4).

I have been united to Him...
Indeed, he who is joined to Him who is immortal
Truly shall become immortal (3:7-8).

And Immortal Life embraced me
And kissed me.
And from that is the Spirit which is within me.
And it cannot die because it is life (28:7-8).

And I put off darkness,
And put on light.

And even I myself acquired members... And his everlasting fellowship
(21:3-5).

Like the arm of the bridegroom over the bride So is my yoke over
those who know me (42:8).

The Coptic Gospel of Philip similarly retains the Greek word,
koinonia, to describe Mary Magdalene's redemptive relationship with Christ (59:8-9;
63:33), a relationship which apocryphal writers understood to be that of
"consort" or "wife."19
This again reflects the wide-spread tradition in the Western Church that Mary was
the "fallen" human counterpart of the Church, whom Jesus had come to redeem,
even as Hosea's wife, Gomer, had been the counterpart of Yahweh's fallen
"Bride," the spiritually "dead" Israel (Hos. 1-3).20 By such fellowship,
"the holy united itself to the unholy in order to make it holy" (Anderson and
Freedman), i.e. shared its Divine Nature with its defunct "partner" (koinonos)
in order to bring her back to life.

The Masonic idea of reclaiming secret knowledge from before the
Flood likewise appears to have had very ancient origins, already
being spoken of in various pseudepigraphal works of the second century B.C. The Book
of Jubilees (ca. 150 B.C.), for example, contains the old legend that secret knowledge
had been given by God to the patriarchs, and that it had been specially preserved and
handed down by them for the use of later mankind:

Thus did Enoch...command Methuselah, his son, and Methuselah his son
Lamech, and Lamech commanded me (Noah) all the things which his father commanded him.
And I also will give you commandments, my sons, as Enoch commanded his sons in the
first jubilees (dispensations) (7:38-9).

We are further informed that these "commandments" included
secret knowledge for controlling "demons," as well as information concerning
"every kind of medicine" (10:11-13). Later, these were passed on to Noah's
son, Shem (10:14), who (according to rabbinic tradition) taught them to Abraham (Pirke de R. Eliezer, 8). Abraham subsequently passed them
to his son, Isaac, explaining that:

I have found it written in the books of my forefathers, and in the
words of Enoch, and in the words of Noah (Jubilees, 21:10).

These writings eventually came into the hands of Jacob (31:21-6),
who gave them to Levi, "that he might preserve them and renew them for all his
children unto this day" (45:16; cf. D&C 84:6-17). Significantly, Jubilees
is thought to be the product of the same Hasidic element which withdrew to Qumran and
claimed to possess sacred mysteries withheld from the rest of the world.21

The aging Enoch is also said to have told his son, Methuselah, that
he had seen "heavenly tablets," upon which wonderful secrets were written, and to have asked him to faithfully preserve them for future
generations (1 Enoch 82:1; 104:13; 107:3; 108:1ff). Sinners, he warned, would
alter and pervert them, but in the End Time they would come forth in their purity for
those who were worthy to receive them (104:12-13).22This secret
knowledge included information concerning the Flood and how to prepare for it (106:15-19).

Enoch appears to have been the Hebrew counterpart of the Babylonian
Edoranchus (the seventh "patriarch" in Berossus' account of the first
generations), who was also taught secrets of prophecy, and who was eventually welcomed by
the gods into their company.23
Similarly, 1 Enoch describes the apotheosis of Enoch, who was "raised
aloft to the Son of Man" (70:1) and told,

Thou art the Son of Man24
who art born unto righteousness, and righteousness abides over thee, and the righteousness
of the Ancient of Days forsakes thee not (71:14).

This allusion to the "Ancient of Days" shows that Enoch
did not remain merely a "saved" human being, but
became the equivalent of the Heavenly "Son of Man" (Daniel 7:13). Second Enoch accordingly has him say of himself,

And I looked down at myself, and I was as one of the glorious ones,
and there was no difference (22:10).

3 Enoch even claims that the patriarch became no less than a

Lesser Yahweh...for my Name is in him (12:5).

It would appear, then, that Enoch was looked upon by ancient writers
as the possessor of the heavenly secrets which lead to deification,25 and which he bequeathed to his
offspring for the benefit of later generations, when righteousness would return to the
world. This daring claim should also be compared with the Masonic belief that the
candidate for the Third Degree may become what Christ is, as we shall presently
see.

Josephus himself claimed that this sacred knowledge had first been
transmitted through Seth,26
who (knowing of the impending Flood) inscribed it on

two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone; they inscribed
their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by
the Flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind, and
also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them (Antiquities,
1.2.3).

The same tradition was subsequently taken up by the first
alchemists.27 The
third-century founder of European alchemy, Pseudo-Democritus, for example, claimed to have
learned of it from his dead Master, "Ostanes the Persian," who (like Noah) had
died before passing his wonderful knowledge to his sons. Yet when Democritus
succeeded in resuscitating the shade of "Ostanes," he learned that the lost
pillars could still be found in a certain Temple. These
he eventually located and opened to discover the "Great Mystery," which teaches
that immortality is transferred between heaven and earth

This again, is the mystery of koininia, which was expressed
by the embrace in the Temple, and which would later find its way into the Masonic
"Points of Fellowship." A similar alchemical tradition, relating to
secrets inscribed on ancient pillars, survived into the late Middle Ages as the legend of
the "Emerald Tablet," purportedly found in the tomb of Hermes Trismegistus, and
which disclosed that "gold" appears when the Divine unites with the Human to
form a single spiritual continuum:

It is certain that to effect the one truly wonderful work the Above
must be one with the Below, and the Below with the Above...The Father of the one only
thing is the Sun, its Mother the Moon...Its power is perfect after it has been united
to a spiritualized earth.29

Josephus' story of the antediluvian pillars became widely accessible
once again through an account contained in Ranulf Higdon's Polychronicon,
a popular history of the world which he completed around 1350. Here we learn how
Adam foresaw the time when the Eternal Wisdom would be lost. He
therefore committed it to the safety of twin pillars of marble and tile so that it could
eventually come forth for the salvation of mankind. An identical account found its
way into the Masonic Cooke Manuscript (ca. 1410), which is one of the "Old
Charges" upon which modern Masonic legend is based.30 This time, however, it was said that Lamech's
son, Jabal, was the one who erected the twin pillars, so that the sacred science would
"neither burn nor sink in water." It is in fact very likely that medieval
readers associated Jabal's father, Lamech, with the "Lamech" who was the father
of Noah, hence the transferal of the story to Noah and his
sons in later Masonic documents. The Gnostics had also spoken of this important
tradition, which appears in the Nag Hammadi Three Steles of Seth, written sometime
before A.D. 265. This explains that immortality is the
result of the candidate's henosis with a Gnostic version of Christ. Here again, the
two become one, thereby sharing their Father's perfection:

Thou art a Father through a Father...Thou didst unite the all
through the all...Thou hast come from One (i.e. from a divine corporeity with the Father),
thou didst come to one...Thou hast saved us...those who become perfect with thee who is
complete, who completes (120:26--121:9).

In this case, however, the two antediluvian pillars have
become three, no doubt to symbolize God's "triadic" nature. Yet the
basic "Great Mystery," which the Gnostics preserved in this special form,
appears to have exerted a critical influence on the "Great Work" of the
alchemists, whose search for "gold" was also a matter of "begetting"
eternal life by bringing heaven and earth together, even as Christ became one with his
disciples.

By now, then, it should be fairly obvious that the "resurrected
dead Master" who discloses this great secret of henosis with eternal life was
none other than Jesus Christ, who himself had to be raised from the dead before he could
impart it to his disciples. This was obviously understood by the Freemasons, for it
is said at the conclusion of the granting of the Third Degree that the person whom the
candidate impersonates is "the greatest man who ever lived." Peter Tomkins
in fact suggests that the reason why Catholicism so opposes the "rival sect" of
Freemasonry is the latter's daring assertion that each candidate becomes "the living,
slain and rearisen Christ in his own person," and that through identification with
the experience of his surrogate, Hiram Abiff, "each for himself" becomes
"no less than Very God of Very God."31

The identity of the "resurrected dead Christ" is also made
clear in the medieval account which Gustave Flaubert incorporated into his
Masonically-inspired tale, The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaler (1875).
This time, Jesus appears as a dying and loathsome Leper, who is befriended by Julian
the Ferryman. The latter takes pity on him and attempts
to warm him with his own breath, described with a fictional version of the Five Points of
Fellowship:

Julian stretched himself completely over him, mouth to mouth and
chest to chest.

Then the Leper clasped him, and his eyes suddenly became as
bright as stars; his hair drew out like sunbeams ...An abundance of delight, a superhuman
joy flooded into Julian's soul as he lay swooning; and he who still clasped him in his
arms grew taller, ever taller, until his head and feet touched the two walls of the hut.
The roof flew off, the firmament unrolled---and Julian rose toward the blue spaces, face
to face with our Lord Jesus, who carried him to heaven (trs. by Arthur McDowall;
emphasis added).

Flaubert claimed to have derived this tale from a stained-glass
window in the Cathedral at Rouen, depicting events in the life of St. Julian. But the
window to which Flaubert refers shows only St. Julian ferrying the Leper across a river
and being later rewarded with eternal life. For the embrace itself, Flaubert depended upon
the thirteenth century French prose-account, which tells us that the leprous Christ first
offered his life-giving embrace not to Julian, but to his wife ("Madame, it is
fitting that I have the body of a woman to warm me...That is why I have come here").32 The compassionate wife is
about to oblige the Leper, but the latter instead blesses the couple for their proffered
kindness and miraculously disappears. The "ferry-man's wife" is of course
a figure for the New Testament "Bride of Christ," i.e. the Church and its
members (Eph. 5:31-32), who must be willing to do for each other what he is willing to do
for them:

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for
his friends (John 15:13).

Wilt thou (Peter) lay down thy life for my sake?
(13:38).

This mutual reciprocity is the Johannine version of koinonia,
or the disciple's "sharing" of Christ's life of sacrifice. That the wife's
embrace was not required in this instance suggests that it belongs to the ancient
tradition of the "arrested sacrifice" (cf. Gen. 22:10-18), i.e. evidence that
one is willing to give of one's self before it is actually demanded (cf.
Rom. 4:5, 11).

The startling idea of portraying Christ as a "Leper" was
also very ancient, going back at least to the first quarter of the second century, when
Aquila translated Isa. 53:4 ("we did esteem him as stricken") as "we did
esteem him as haphemenon ('leprous')." The same tradition is also
recorded in the Talmud and Midrash, which describe the expected Messiah as a
"Leper" (BT. Sanhedrin, 98a, 98b; Sepher Zerubbabel).33 But the Old French account
must have also been based on the Biblical belief that the sick and dying could be
resuscitated by means of an intimate embrace, as, for instance, when a beautiful maiden
was placed in bed with the ailing King David to "warm" and revive him (1 Kg.
1:1-4). The Septuagint version particularly stipulates
that she is to "excite him and lie with him." Yet the King was too weak to
respond, and "knew her not." David must therefore cease to be King, and in
fact dies shortly thereafter.34
For reasons of his own, Flaubert conventionalized the proposed embrace in
traditional Masonic fashion, at the same time transferring it to St. Julian and Jesus.
Thus he gave us his own literary version of the well-known resuscitation of Hiram
Abiff, which became still another metaphor for the henosis of the resurrected
Christ and the candidate who is willing to take part in his life and death.

In more recent years, this Masonic line of resurrected "dead
Masters" (Noah, Hiram, Ostanes, the Leper, etc.) was joined by the figure of
Bezaleel, the architect of Moses' Tabernacle in the wilderness (Ex. 35:30-35). Alex
Horne traces his appearance to a manuscript account from around 1726, which tells how two
young princes sought to resurrect the wise old "stone-cutter" (vs. 33), in order
to be instructed in the lost arts of Freemasonry.35

Such a Bezaleel legend, however, was mentioned already in Eusebius'
fourth-century Church History (10.4), making the
"sacred crafts" of Bezaleel, Solomon and Zerubbabel cognate metaphors for the
one who raises the "new and holy Temple of Christ" (Mt. 26:61; Mk. 14:58; John
2:19). The Talmud had also assigned special wisdom to the figure of Bezaleel,
claiming that he "knew how to combine the letters by which the heavens and the earth
were created" (Babylonian Talmud [BT] Berakoth,
55a).36 Indeed, he
was said to be filled with God's Spirit and with divine, secret knowledge, by means of
which the "heavens were established" and the "depths broken up" (Prov.
3:19-20). Clearly, Bezaleel was already a well-known figure for the Creator. In the
section entitled "Panegyric on the Splendor of Our Affairs," Eusebius singles
out this symbolic Creator, "Bezaleel," as the "Chief Architect" of the
restored Sacred Edifice, and calls him

Another Zerubbabel superadding a glory to the Temple of God, much
greater than the former (Church History, 10.4.).

This "great glory," he adds, was foreshadowed by Hiram's
building of a Temple at Tyre, the original prototype of the Jerusalem Temple.He then recounts how
"Bezaleel," the new Temple-builder, has succeeded in raising an eternal edifice
which will never again pass away. The following account is condensed from Eusebius' rather
lengthy text, but we have preserved his characteristic language throughout, with its
surprising "proto-Masonic" allusions (here italicized):

Now the Savior has come to his Holy Hill. Seeing his Bride
lying desolate upon the ground, he stretches forth his hands and raises up her
dead carcass, causing her to stand upright. She who was assailed by the
batteries of her enemies and left for dead upon the earth becomes a restored Temple,
whose chief Cornerstone is the Savior himself. In its Holy of Holies the Spouse
reclaims his Wife--a woman once deserted and rejected--now clothed in glory and ornaments
befitting a royal Bride. Then seeing her promised sons, she asks, "Who
hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children and am a Widow?"
Yet her promised restoration was inscribed of old on Sacred Tablets, and is
now brought to reality by "Bezaleel," the new and excellent
"Zerubbabel," our most peaceful "Solomon," i.e. Jesus Christ, the
Architect of the New Temple. Wonderful and mighty is this work, but more wonderful
than wonders are these archetypes, these renewals of divine
and spiritual buildings in our souls, which the Son of God himself framed and fashioned
according to his own image, and to which everywhere and in all respects he imparted the
likeness of God.

Eusebius then summarizes the overall meaning of his parable as
follows:

A kind of intellectual image on earth of those things beyond the
vault of heaven...A Temple of celestial types, a Temple given in symbols and figures.

We are especially struck by his references to the "dead
carcass" of the Church (cf. the Scottish Graham Ms. and its "stinking
dead body"), which the Savior has caused to "stand upright" (Graham Ms:
"reared up").37
She who was "assailed by the batteries of her enemies" also reminds us of
the mortally-wounded Hiram Abiff, who was at once a symbol of Christ and the Christian who
aspires to become identified with him (Tomkins). The "restored Temple" is
of course the central ideal of Freemasonry, which seeks to restore the "true
spiritual house" and to rediscover the "way into the truth and the life" (Dumfries
No. 4 Ms., Catechism).38
Meanwhile, since the Church was formerly a "Widow" rejected by her Husband
(cf. Isa. 54:6), her children are appropriately called "sons of the Widow," a
common designation for members of the Masonic Fraternity.39 Their restoration was again promised on
"sacred tablets," corresponding to the antediluvian tablets and pillars of Shem
and Enoch, now the Twin Pillars, "Jachin" and "Boaz," in the Masonic
Temple. The names "Bezaleel," "Zerubbabel" and
"Solomon" are once more synonyms for Jesus Christ, who promised to restore the
"Temple of his Body" on the third day, and who would become the resurrected
Masonic Master, "Hiram Abiff." Finally, the designation of this renewed
Temple as a "heavenly" structure corresponds to the idea of the "Heavenly
Temple" described in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and which has become the
"symbolic Temple" of Speculative Masonry, and whose "types and
figures"40 signify
realities yet to be realized in the lives of its members.

Eusebius' conception of the "intellectual Temple" clearly
belongs to the tradition of spiritualizing allegories in the Testament of Levi, the
writings of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and indeed, in the New
Testament itself. 41
Thus it served as another important link between the traditions of the early Church
and the writers of the Middle Ages. Just how the tradition passed on to the Masons
of later centuries is not so well known, though the parallels are too striking and
significant to have been mere coincidence. It may be noted, however, that the
Venerable Bede in the seventh century wrote a parable very similar to that of Eusebius,
called De Templo Solominis, which contains the same sort of "allegorical or
symbolical study" of the Temple that characterizes Speculative Freemasonry.42 The thirteenth century Bishop
Durandus also wrote such an "allegory," telling how men must work to build up
the kingdom of God by "cementing the stones" with charity, "covering its
roof" with faith, and erecting a City "four-square" with the cardinal
virtues, etc. Much the same thing reoccurs in a 1659 work by the Puritan Divine,
Samuel Lee (Orbis Miraculum, or the Temple of Solomon), and again in John Bunyan's Solomon's
Temple Spiritualized (1688), both of which express the truths of the New Testament by
means of Temple-symbolism, such as the restoring of God's Temple with the
"stones" of our bodies, erected on the "sure foundation" of Christ,
etc.43

One of Eusebius' most arresting and interesting "figures,"
however, occurs in the preceding chapter of his History, wherein he declares that

according to the ancient oracles...bone will be brought to bone
and joint to joint...(10.3).

This metaphor also appears in the roughly contemporary Nag Hammadi
library, explaining that man's separation from Christ began when the preexistent Body of
Christ was "dismembered" by the Fall (cf. Gen. 2:21),44 but will be brought back together
by a Sacred Marriage embrace in the eschaton (Gen. 2:24 and Eph. 5:31-32):

The present Age was made in this fashion, and it was planned, and it
was short, for it was a finger that released a finger, and a joint that was separated from
a joint (Trimorphic Protennoia, 42:33-43:4).45

Enter (again) through the rib whence you came, and hide yourselves
from your lusts (Interpretation of Knowledge, 10:34-6).

My Redeemer, redeem me; for I am yours; from you I have come forth (Prayer
of the Apostle Paul, 1A:3-6).

According to Eusebius, the effects of this redemptive union will
"pervade all the members" with "one energy of the Divine Spirit,"
joining them to the Savior as a single "harmonious Temple." This is in
fact the inmost secret of the "divine and sacred mysteries" (10.3), which were
designed to restore "the hideous carcass of the dead to life" (10.4), a striking
image which has haunted Masonic lore ever since.

Perhaps the best-known of all Masonic symbols are the compass
and square, shown interlocked with the letter "G" between them, as the
traditional emblems of Freemasonry (see figure a). During the granting of
the First, Second and Third Degrees,46
the compass and square are placed upon the altar of the Temple in an interlinked fashion,
representing the divine Light as it unites with the candidate and fills him with
increasing knowledge. At the same time, this leads to
his "rebirth" as its resurrected "offspring" (figures bandc).

That this symbolic rite was derived from a still older mystery,
however, is suggested by an early Masonic catechism, which asks,

What did the 2 cherubims on the ark of the covenant represent?

The answer which it gives is:

The mystery of the Golden Altar (Dumfries Ms., ca. 1799).

Thus, the union of "the two Cherubims" in the Jerusalem
Temple would appear to be the ultimate source of the "mystery of the Golden
Altar" in the Masonic Temple.

That the letter "G" (signifying God's secret Name) also
appears between the intertwining compass and square47 is paralleled by Philo's explanation that the union of
the statues in the Jewish Temple represented God's "consorting" with the soul,
and his "divinizing" of the recipient (50). Thus the compass and square
are exact symbolic equivalents of the ancient Cherubim, i.e. the ancient "Male"
and "Female," whose union was the central feature of the Wisdom mystery, and
which brought about the candidate's deification.48 But we should also compare this unique symbolism
with the Divine Image itself (Gen. 1:27), which teaches that God is male and female
united; hence the sacred "G" appears only when the male compass and the female
square are inter-twined.49

The association of these "male" and "female"
symbols with solar and lunar iconography (seefigure d) was also
based on early Israelite and Semitic tradition, according to which the heavenly bodies
represented various male and female deities. Their symbols were in fact still used
by European alchemists to describe the union of "heaven" and "earth,"
taking the "Sun" as a figure of Christ, and the "Moon" as a figure of
his Bride, the Church. These must again unite in order
to "beget" the "Philosopher's Stone," i.e. eternal life (seefigure
e). Zosimus of Panopolis accordingly wrote in the third century that
"heaven" must marry "earth" if the latter is to be regenerated:

Above, the celestial things, below, the terrestrial; by the male and
the female the work is accomplished. Join the male and the female and you will find what
you are seeking (Aphorisms of Zosimus; seefigure
e).

But before they can complete this all-important work, both must die
and pass through the "nigredo" state, i.e. the death and dissolution of the body
(seefigure f). Zosimus appropriately
characterized this stage of the mystery with the image of the "priest" who is
torn to pieces and mutilated before he can be resurrected and discover the "Stone of
the Nile."50

Other alchemists described the marriage of the
"sun-compass" and the "moon-square" as the bringing together of superius/inferius
and externis/interius (Tractatus Aureus Hermetis), which exactly mirrors the
language of the ancient Gospel of Thomas ("You shall enter the Kingdom when
the upper is as the lower and the outside is as the inside," log. 22).51 Both "Male" and
"Female" will then be resurrected as the "gold" of eternal life,
forever joined as a divine zakar wanekebah, or "Rebis"
("Two-in-One," figure
g). The "Sun" and the "Moon" are further referred
to as the "King" and "Queen," just as the Jews referred to God and his
exiled Shekhinah in the Kabbalistic mystery.

The ultimate origin of the compass and square as divine emblems is
presently lost in the mists of antiquity, but their universal employment as builders'
tools caused them to appear nearly everywhere as theological symbols for denoting creative
power. In Greek iconography, for example, the nature of the gods Pluto, Bacchus and
Mars was represented by the triangle (a three-sided, enclosed compass), and that of the
goddesses Rhea, Venus, Ceres, Vesta and Juno by the square.52 In Egypt, the "amulets" of Osiris
included two plumb lines, suspended from two compasses, as well as two squares (figure h).53 In pre-Christian China, one also found the Demiurge, Fu
Hsih, and his female counterpart, Nü Kua, displaying the compass and square as symbols of
their male and female creative powers (seefigure iandfigure
j). Even earlier, the I Ching (ca. 720-474 B.C.) had described the
heavens as round (just as the compass delineates the horizon), and the earth as square
(with its "four corners").54

But these symbols were also employed by the Israelite Creator, who
declares in the Old Testament that

I will set a plumb line in the midst of my people, Israel
(Amos 7:8).

Judgment will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet
(Isa. 28:17).

And thou shalt make an altar...(that) shall be foursquare
(Ex. 27:1).

When he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass
upon the face of the depth (Prov. 8:27).55

He has described a circle upon the face of the waters (Job 26:10).

These references show that the ubiquitous builder's tools were also
traditionally associated with his divine power and work. There
was a legend that the veil before God's Throne in the
Heavenly Holy of Holies was covered with the archetypal forms from which Creation would
proceed.56These forms undoubtedly included the basic round and straight
shapes of nature, which the compass and square were used to mark out. It is
therefore no surprise to find that medieval cathedral builders frequently depicted Christ
with the plumb line, compass and square in his hands, as, for example, in the Cathedral of
Santa Croce in Florence, where Jesus stands above the main portal holding the worker's
square as a sign of his divine creative power.

More intimate forms of art likewise employed these symbols as signs
of Yahweh-Christ's creative and healing powers. There is an Italian miniature of the
thirteenth century, for instance, showing him holding the compasses in his right hand,
measuring out the extent of the universe.57
This appears to have been inspired by the Old Testament prophet who asked, with
reference to Yahweh,

Who hath measured the water in the hollow of his hand, and meted out
heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the
mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?...It is he that sitteth upon the circle
of the earth (Isa. 40:12, 22).

Using the same metaphors, the early Freemasons would say that

The Free Mason heweth the hard stones, and heweth off here a piece,
and here another, till the stones be fit and apt for the place where he will lay them.
Even so God, the heavenly Free Mason, buildeth a Christian Church, and frameth and
polisheth us, which are the costly and precious stones (Otto Werdmueller, A Spiritual
and Most Precious Pearl, ca. 1550).58

Edmund Spenser, in the early seventeenth century, similarly
described the carrying out of God's work by means of the Freemason's symbolic tools:

The frame thereof seem'd partly circular
And part triangular: O work divine!
Those two the first and last proportions are.
The one imperfect, mortal, feminine;
The other immortal, perfect, masculine;
And twixt them both a quadrat was the base (The Fairie Queene, II. ix.22).

Milton, too, spoke of God's creation of the universe by means of
these sacred implements:

Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
his universe, and all created things (Paradise Lost, Book VII).

Yet the privilege of sharing the "mystery" of these sacred
symbols was restricted to whose who were deemed worthy. This
is clearly shown by an early Masonic manuscript from around 1581, which stipulates that

A Freemason ought not to let him (who is not a Freemason) have the
privilege of the compass, square, level and the plumb line.59

Joseph Smith similarly added to the received text of Genesis 14 the
following strict requirements for enjoying the creative powers of the Priesthood:

Now Melchizedec was a man of faith, who wrought righteousness...And
thus, having been approved of God, he was ordained to high priest after the order of the
covenant which God made with Enoch...And it was delivered unto men by the calling of his
own voice...unto as many as believed on his name. For God having sworn unto Enoch
and unto his seed an oath by himself, that anyone being ordained after this order and
calling should have power, by faith, to break mountains, to divide the seas, to dry up its
waters, to turn them out of their course...to divide the earth, to break every band...
(JST Gen. 14:26-31).

Further associated with the compass and square were depictions of
the corresponding god and goddess as intertwining serpents, whose sacred embrace
created life and maintained fertility. These can in turn be traced all the way back
to the Sumero-Babylonian caduceus,60
that mythical pair whose "nuptial" interaction provided healing and general
well-being (figure k).
These were again connected during the late Babylonian period with the union of the sun and
moon (figure l).
The Israelites at about the same time had a Bronze Serpent (nehushtan) of
their own, whom they worshiped as an essential member of the pantheon (2 Kg. 18:4); its
special purpose was to heal the victims of poisonous reptiles (Num. 21:8-9).
Paradoxically, talismans showing monotheism's "One God" as a
"two-serpent" composite (i.e. as "male and female in one") were still
common during the centuries immediately preceding Christ (figure m, andfigure n). It
is therefore significant that the Church saw the nehushtan as a prophetic allusion
to Christ (John 3:14-15), who would miraculously "heal" the "Temple of his
dead body" in three days (2:19-20).

From the foregoing discussion it should have become abundantly clear
that the basic rites and symbols of Freemasonry had their roots in traditions far older
than the advent of seventeenth-century "Speculative Freemasonry."61 Indeed, there can be no doubt
that such traditions had their ultimate Sitz-im-Leben in the Judaeo-Christian
Temple-cultus, as we have repeatedly described it in the earlier pages of this
study. But what is especially remarkable is that Joseph Smith not only recognized
the generic relationship between these earlier sources and Freemasonry, but that he
correctly discarded the extraneous innovations which had been added to them, incorporating
in their place important elements of his own which were not found in Freemasonry, but
which had truly existed in ancient times.

We must therefore conclude that Mormonism was not at all derived
from Freemasonry, but that both had come from a common source in antiquity. Thus,
what Joseph Smith saw in the Masonic Temple inspired him to recognize important remnants of the authentic Endowment, which he was subsequently able
to restore in their original form. This was roughly equivalent to his earlier
experience with the Egyptian facsimiles in the Book of Abraham. There, too, he had
recognized in the "counterfeit" Egyptian religion generic features of the
Eternal Gospel, features which had also survived since the beginning of time, and which he
finally restored in their pristine purity.

It is particularly noteworthy that of all the extensive Masonic
ritual, which occupies more than two-hundred double-columned pages in Richardon's
Monitor of Freemasonry, the Prophet accepted as genuine only that which might fill a
single page in the same format, even correcting it in major points. The rest
he supplied in the form of authentic covenants derived directly from the Primitive Church,
set again in a traditional Salvation History describing man's "journey through the
wilderness" in search of God. His conception of the Endowment in fact
corresponds far more closely to the Temple-allegories of the early Church Fathers than it
does to Masonic ritual, save for the all-important and central encounter with the
resurrected Savior, which indeed had a history all of its own, long before the Masons
began to imitate it. And since the restored Endowment most closely resembles this
earlier tradition, it would appear that the Freemasons borrowed their ceremony from
ancient "Mormonism," rather than Mormonism from seventeenth-century Freemasonry.

NOTES:

1. On March 15, 1842, Joseph Smith and Sidney
Rigdon were initiated as Entered Apprentice Masons. On the next morning, they were
advanced to Fellow Craft Masons. Later in the same day, Joseph was given the degree
of Master Mason. History of the Church, 4:551-2; Cecil McGavin, Mormonism
and Masonry (Salt Lake City, 1956), 90.

2. Quoted by Reed C. Durham, in a talk given
before the Mormon History Association, Nauvoo, Ill., April 20, 1974. Printed in Mormon
Miscellaneous, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Oct. 1975); published by The New Nauvoo Press, Nauvoo,
ILL.

5. Michael W. Homer, for example, in his
detailed historical study, "Similarity of Priesthood in Masonry," in Dialogue,
vol 27, no. 3, pp. 1-113, notes a number of significant connections between Mormonism and
Freemasonry, but fails to note any connections between Freemasonry and the ancient Church.
This of course leaves the impression that these specific aspects of Mormonism owe their
existence solely to Freemasonry, and that they had no Christian precedents, when in fact,
as we shall show, Freemasonry and Mormonism had a common origin in the early Church.

6. Referring to the Temple-theme of Israel's
"exodus" through the cultic wilderness (Heb. 3:8; 4:1).

7. It is clear, for example, that the idea of
dividing the Endowment into Aaronic and Melchizedec Priesthood portions was already part
of the Prophet's 1833 plan for the City of Zion (see the entry for June 25, 1833, in History
of the Church, I:357-62).

8. Enlarged edition, Salt Lake City, 1956.

9. In Robert Morris, The Poetry of
Freemasonry, quoted in McGavin, op. cit., 11. Emphasis added.

11. Some Freemasons therefore divide their
"forebears" into two separate races: the original Noachites, who had possessed
God's word in an unbroken line since the time of Adam, and the Hiramites, who rediscovered
and restored it at the time of Solomon's Temple.

12. Compare the dissolution of the
preexistent Body of Christ, "finger from finger... joint from joint," etc., in
the Trimorphic Protennoia, 32:33-43:4.

13. Quoted in Alex Horne, King Solomon's
Temple in the Masonic Tradition (North Hollywood, 1974), 341. The "name"
refers to the Masonic Word, given in Richardson's Monitor (p. 37) as
"MAH-HAH-BONE."

14. Quoted in Horne, op. cit., 342. See also
the allegory of Eusebius, below, where the same symbolism was used in the early fourth
century.

15. Quoted in Horne, ibid., 331. The
same theme was also found throughout the medieval mystery plays, and in such works as
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

16. Ibid., 341-5.

17. The divine power of these two prophets
is further attested by their ability to provide the widows and their sons with a
bottomless supply of oil and meal, prefiguring Christ's miracle of the Loaves and Fishes
as symbols of inexhaustible life. Elisha's power was in fact demonstrated once again when
a corpse was resuscitated by lowering it into his grave; when it came into contact with
the old prophet's bones, it was immediately restored to life (2 Kg. 13:21). Combined with
the story of the finding of the Book of the Law in the Jerusalem Temple (2 Kg. 22:8), this
tale was preserved in the Masonic ritual of the Royal Arch Degree, where a candidate is
lowered into a subterranean vault to recover the lost Name of God and to regain its secret
of eternal life. It is significant that Elijah and Elisha are both shown together in
Chartres Cathedral as types and images of Christ and his power to redeem humanity (the
"Widow's Son"); this has been recounted by J. K. Huysmans in his classic study
of Chartres Cathedral, The Cathedral (E.T., London, 1898, 218). Elijah was also
celebrated by medieval alchemists as "Helyas (Elias) the Artist," the master of
alchemy, and the one who raises the dead by means of a chemical "embrace"
uniting the "Sun" and the "Moon" (see Ean Begg, The Cult of the
Black Virgin, London, 1985, 144).

18. Compare Acts
20:10,
where Paul raises a man from the dead with a sacred embrace. Also the Jewish
apocryphon, Joseph And Aseneth, where Joseph gives his bride eternal life with an
embrace and a kiss (15:5-6; 19:10-11). The Seder Eliyahu Rabbah adds
specifically that the Messiah will be the very "Son of the Widow" whom Elijah
raised from the dead. See Theological Dictionary Of The New Testament
(hereafter TDNT), ed. Kittel and Friederich, Grand Rapids, 1976, IX:527.

20. In addition to the figures
`Gomer/Israel' and `Mary Magdalene/the Church' we also find the symbolic `Flute
Girl/Judaism' (in the Acts of Thomas) and the prostitute `Sarah/Israel' (as the
wife of the False Messiah, Shabattai Zevi).

22. See also 2 Enoch, 33:9-11; 35:2-3;
47:2-3; 48:7-9; 54:1ff; 65:5. We should again compare the story of Moses' loss of the
original Tablets of the Law, and their replacement by a "lesser" set of Tablets
(pp. 757-8, above). Jewish Christians referred to this "lesser Law" as the
"False Pericopes," and maintained that Christianity had restored the true
doctrine (see Daniélou, TJC, 60-61).

23. D. S. Russell, The Message and Method
of Jewish Apocalyptic, 112.

24. See Michael A. Knibb, The Ethiopic
Book of Enoch (Oxford, 1978), II:166. E. Isaac (in Charlesworth, Old Testament
Pseudepigrapha, I:50, 43), disturbed by the daring of this statement, objects that
"'son of man'...should be distinguished from the 'Son of Man;'" S. Mowinkel
suggests the same distinction. Yet D. S. Russell observes that "the phrase thereby
loses its technical meaning, becoming merely, "Thou are the man who..."
(op. cit., 349), i.e. that it is deprived of its deifying import. R. H. Charles was in
fact so disturbed by the same passage that he gratuitously altered it to "This is the Son of Man" (instead of "Thou art..."). Emphasis ours.

25. Compare Philo, Questions on Exodus,
2.40: "'Come up to Me to the mountain'...signifies that a holy soul is divinized
(deificari) by ascending...(where) there is no place but God."

26. Thus the origin of the
"Sethite" Gnostics, who claimed to represent the lost knowledge of the old
patriarchs.

30. Horne, King Solomon's Temple,
233ff. According to Higdon, "the time men knew, so Adam said, that they should be
destroyed by fire and water, therefore the books they had made by great travail and study
would be destroyed. They enclosed these in two great pillars of marble and tile...in order
to save them for the help of mankind" (ibid., 234).

31. Peter Tomkins, The Magic of Obelisks (N.Y., 1981), 110. This should be compared with Hippolytus' summary of the early Church's
doctrine of deification (theosis): "Thou hast become God...Whatever it is consistent
with God to impart, these God has promised to bestow upon thee, because thou hast been
deified...For the Deity by condescension does not diminish aught of the dignity of His
divine perfection, having made thee even God to his glory" (Refutations, X:30).

36. Such "letters" were even at
the time being developed into the Kabbalistic doctrine of the SEPHIROTH, or the primal
attributes out of which God created the universe. See the SEFER YETZIRAH (Book of Creation) and the SEFER HA'BAHIR (Book of Light), written between the third and the eleventh
centuries.

37. Compare also the Seder Eliyahu
Rabbah,
wherein God "sets the dead on their feet" and embraces them back to life.

38. Quoted in Horne, King Solomon's
Temple, 60.

39. The oldest known use of this epithet
appears in the Old Testament stories of Elijah and Elisha, who restored life to the dead
sons of widows who had befriended them. By the time of Jewish Christianity, it
referred to the heavenly "Mother" who became "evil" by attempting to
rule over matter without the help of her Syzygos, the "True Prophet" (Clementine
Homilies, 3.20,22, 27 and Clementine Recognitions, 1.45). She thus appears to
be related to the Gnostic "Fallen Sophia," or the preexistent Mother who awaits
reconciliation with the Savior. Certain Gnostics thus
referred to themselves as "sons of the Widow," especially the Manichaeans (C. J.
Jung, Mysterium Coniiunctionis, Princeton, 1963, 17-23). The Manichaean
Book of Secrets also describes both Jesus and followers as "Sons of the
Widow," for he was held to be the "Elder Brother" of the disciples (Isabel
Cooper-Oakley, Masonry and Medieval Mysticism, London, 1900, 97). All in fact
belonged to the same heavenly race, "without earthly father" (Heb. 7:3).
From the Manichaeans, the expression "sons of the Widow" may have passed
to Wolfram von Eschenbach, whose hero "Parzival" was also a "son of the
Widow," showing his own descent from this same heavenly family (cf. Isa. 53:10; Mk.
3:35). Wolfram claimed to have received his story from a certain
"Flegetanis," a scion of the ancient tribe of Solomon and Hiram, who supposedly
lived in Kabbalistic Spain and had access to the kind of secret knowledge described in
"Survivals of the Temple Cult in Kabbalism." From such facts as
these it would seem that both Kabbalism and Gnosticism served as conduits for the
transmission of this ancient lore to the founders of Freemasonry.

40. Compare the Gospel of Philip:
"The mysteries of the truth are revealed in types and images" in the Holy of
Holies (84:21-26).

42. Horne, Sources of Masonic Symbolism (Richmond, Va., 1981), 75ff. This tradition is often referred to as "Masonic
Moralizing," and we see it again in certain references in the LDS Temple to the
"meaning" of its symbols. Compare Eph. 6:10-17 for the New Testament
background to this "moralizing."

43. Ibid., 52, 73.

44. See 2 Clement 14, and the long version of Eph.
5:30. Eph. 5:30, which read, "for we are members of his body, from his
flesh, and from his bones (see Markus Barth, Anchor Bible, Ephesians,
2:721).

45. Compare also the Graham Manuscript, above.

46. According to the closing lecture given
during the granting of the Third Degree, the three basic Degrees (Apprentice, Fellow,
Master) represent "the three principle stages of human life, viz.: Youth, Manhood,
and Age" (Richardson's Monitor, reprinted by Ezra
Cook, Publishers, Chicago: 1875pp. 40-1). Compare the Primitive Church's doctrine of
the three degrees of glory (1 Cor. 15:41; Mt. 13:8, 23; also Papias, Fragments, 5;
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, V.36:2; Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies,
VI.13, 14; etc..

47. Alex Horne, Sources of Masonic
Symbolism, 63-4.

48. According to the research of Raphael
Patai (The Hebrew Goddess, third edition, Detroit, 1990, pp. 67-95), there were
actual cherubim in the Holy of Holies of the Second Temple, which had been redesigned to
represent a male and a female in an erotic embrace: "When the pilgrims came up to the
festival, the veil would be raised for them, and the cherubim shown to them, whose bodies
were intertwisted with one another, and they would be thus addressed: Look! You are
beloved before God as the love between a man and a woman" (BT.
YOMA, 54a; BT. BABA BATRA, 99a).
When the Christians gained access to the Holy of Holies (Heb. 10:19-20), they too
could embrace God in person, as we read in the Gospel of Thomas: "When you
make the two one, when you make the male and the female into a single one, when you make
eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of
a foot, and an image in the place of an image, you will enter into the kingdom" (i.e.
pass through the veil) (22). This also appears to have been the "Great
Mystery" of Paul, where Christ and the Church become "one flesh" (Eph.
5:31-32). Both were undoubtedly patterned after the example in Ezek. 16:8, where God
"covers Israel's nakedness" with his cloak and "makes her his own" in
a marriage covenant. Note again that the Seder Eliyahu Rabbah predicts that
God will one day raise up the dead from the dust, set her on her feet, and place her
between his knees, embrace her, and bring her back to life (quoted above). Compare
also Acts 20:10, where Paul brings a dead person back to life with a sacred embrace.

49. Compare E. Snow's definition of Godhood,
in Journal of Discourses, 19:269-70. "Deity consists of man and
woman...There can be no God except he is composed of the man and the woman united."
They are like scissors, "composed of two halves, but they are necessarily parts
of one another."

50. See Lynn Thorndyke, History of Magic
and Experimental Science (N.Y., 1923), I:198.

54. "Ch'ien is Heaven. It is
round. It is the ruler, the father...K'un is the earth, the Mother...the level" (Appendix 5, to I CHING). "Sun suggests the
plumb-line, the carpenter's square" (ch. 18). Liu An (d. 122 B.C.) also wrote that
"the way of Heaven is termed circular, and the way of earth square. The square
governs darkness (yin) and the round governs brightness (yang)" Huai-nan
Tzu, ch. 3).

60. Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in
Indian Art and Civilization (N.Y., 1946), 73-4. The date would have been as
early as 2600 B.C.

61. See Horne, King Solomon's Temple,
pp. 26-63, for a thorough and objective discussion of the recent origins of
"Speculative Freemasonry," which can no longer be supposed to have existed
amongst the stone-workers of earlier centuries. It is also clear that the traditions
which the Speculative Freemasons inherited from the past came from Christian
Temple-theory, not from a romanticized "Temple of Solomon," through (as we have
repeatedly seen) the Christian Temple had its own roots in the Wisdom Mystery of the Jews.